Meet the Folks Behind Windows Phone's Wonderful User Interface

I've seen a lot of strange complaints in recent days from the Windows Phone crowd, since Microsoft is porting a lot of its mobile apps to iOS and Android now, presumably nixing some of their favorite platform's key differentiators. But the real advantage of Windows Phone has nothing to do with apps, it's all about the wonderful Metro user experience, which deemphasizes the need for standalone apps. And today, Microsoft profiled some of the folks responsible for that UI.

"For the past several years, the Windows Phone Shell Team has been continually improving the user interface for Windows Phones with the goal of making them incredibly intuitive and engaging to use," a new Microsoft PressPass feature article reads. "The 'shell' refers to the phone's core user experiences, such as the lock screen, start screen, live tiles and similar components."

Featured in this article are:

James Drage, a senior software development engineer on the Windows Phone Shell Team.

Ricardo Espinoza, a software development engineer on the team.

Joshua Phillips, a program manager who worked on the Smart DJ feature.

Sue Loh, a senior software development engineer who monitors the health of the Windows Phone including performance, battery power, memory.

It's an interesting read, and it's nice to see Microsoft highlighting the people behind one of its most innovative products. With a company as big as Microsoft, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that there are real humans living and breathing this stuff every day.

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